Best Apps For Social Media Planning in 2017

Does organizing your social media sound like a chore? Do you often feel overwhelmed at the thought of planning your social media posts?

No need to stress! Here are the exact steps I take to go from a photo on my iPhone to a beautiful post on Instagram! You got this!

First, you have to create a pattern of photos for Instagram. To do this, and to organize photos and how they will be posted, I use the Plann app. Plann has been around for a few years, but I love their new features, which include analytics, the best times to post, and top performing photos.

When I am organizing, I use place holder photos with different categories of photos that I post. You can see an example below. (You want to include things about YOU so your audience can get to know you! Keep your target client in mind when doing this, and have fun with it!)

I make sure that my photos have a yellow-ish tone. And then I make sure that my photos with borders are separated enough to form a pattern. Check out my Instagram grid here for an example. When I am editing my photos for this overall look, I use 3-4 different apps for each photo, which I will explain below!

First, I AirDrop the photo I want to edit from my phone to my computer, and I import the photo into Lightroom. This ensures that I will get that yellow-ish tint on the photo, and it will be bright enough and look like all of my other photos in the grid.

If you do not have Lightroom, an alternative for your iPhone would be the Afterlight app. I love this app because there are pre-set filters, and you can edit and save your filters. This is great for social media if you are wanting to edit all of your photos the same way.

Once the photo is ready to be scheduled, I pull it into the Plann app, put it in the grid where it goes, and write the caption. I usually write this in my notes app on my phone and then copy and paste it in to the Plann app, because I can type the caption on my computer much faster, and it automatically syncs to my phone. I then add hashtags to the photo and schedule it to be posted.

The Plann app is awesome with hashtags too, because it pulls your most popular ones, and lets you save them. You then can have them to copy and paste into your caption. The popular thing to do used to be to put them in the first comment, but Instagram does not like this as much anymore. You can see an example of how I put my hashtags in my caption here.

Be sure and check the newest Instagram rules, and make sure your post does not get shadowbanned! You can find out more about shadowbanning here.

And that’s how it’s done! I take great pride in my photos and how I post them, so the extra time to edit is worth it for me. I hope these apps help speed up the process for you, as they have for me!

Do you use any time-saving social media apps? I’d love to hear what you use! Tweet them to me – @charissocial!

PS – If this is just too much and you need a social media manager, I’d love to help you! I create content and post for you JUST LIKE I DO for myself! If you’re interested, check out my social media packages and book a discovery call!